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Moving house issues

By Skean Dhude

On thing of concern to many of us, although clearly not all, in the current economic climate is where we live. Own your home, buying your home, renting or council supplied we all have the potential of needing to relocate or being forced to relocate. Even home owners with no mortgage are not totally safe.

There are a couple of issues around moving house which can occur, some are obvious, and some are specific to preppers. Even those living in a council home, thought of as permanent nowadays, may face leaving it and relocating if new discussions taking place in government gets some steam.

You may want to move

You can have your home repossessed

You can be evicted

You can be displaced for other reasons

All of these are traumatic enough for ordinary people even if usually the council has obligations to rehouse you if something makes you homeless. In these turbulent times that may be an obligation they can ignore for a while but if you have children it is a no brainer. It is unusual for anyone in the UK to be homeless without an additional reason although it does happen and will likely get worse as the economic climate changes.

For preppers though even something as simple as moving creates a big problem for us. We have preps to store and they take up a lot of space. There are security issues with OPSEC. They are also spread all over the home and garden and may even be buried or hidden in specially constructed hidey holes in the house, the loft and the outbuildings. If we are leaving our homes we only have four options for our preps;

Relocate them to our new home

Relocate them to a secure place

Leave them where they are

Abandon them

Relocate them to our new home

Obviously when we relocate we need to move them with us as well as the furniture and the other items but if it to a temporary place will there be room? What if it is to a refuge, a furnished refuge? Is the home permanent? If not modifying the home may be a No No and you may be forced to move away at some time in the future. No house mods but you can bury things although not too deep. Basically, though this is little different from what you had before. Just be aware that neighbours will see you moving everything in. Remember OPSEC.

Relocate them to a secure place

We could buy a small place not far away where we can store our preps. This is a bit more risky as we will not be able to look after them and rotating the foodstuffs will be an issue. However, if you have a good place it may be more secure for your stores and with easier access. Only thing is you can’t be sure that it will not be sold and built on if it is on prime land. Consider where very carefully. Bear in mind there are a million and one storage companies springing up and they are not like their US counterparts. They are not cheap nor are they really secure and you won’t have real privacy being on CCTV all the time. Remember OPSEC here especially as you will be under surveillance.

Leave them where they are

This is an option worth considering depending on your location and where you have secured your preps and where about you move to. If hidden well or buried deep you can leave them until needed and go along and retrieve them. Obviously the risk is that someone comes across them but the advantage is that if someone knowing you are a prepper and searching your home won’t find them. It is risky but you can prepare now for that if you wish by burying deep and in an area that is unlikely to be built on.

Disposing of them

The worst option. Either leaving them for others, giving them away or selling off quickly just to get them out of the way. A preppers nightmare. Sell what you can, give away what you can to friends or charity and leave the rest. Don’t leave anything compromising.

Avoid moving if possible

All of these are to be avoided if possible. You shouldn’t really move your preps around if you can help it. You are much better having a secure base but the economy being what it is, government being what it is unless you have a reasonable sum of money you can easily find yourself out of your home and looking for a new one and with more than enough preps to need another moving truck. I have a lathe and milling machine as well as a lot of lab equipment I could fill a moving van with all my stored preps. That is before my normal food preps and the day to day furniture in my house.

I can’t see me even leaving anything behind but you never know what is going to happen as our society changes, and not for the better, but maybe one day I’ll move into a place with a bat cave and when I move out I’ll keep some land and the bat cave entrance secret. Although you never know, the new owners might decide to dig down and install a new pond which could lead to discovery or flooding. Nope. Still not leaving anything on someone else’s land. (Unless it really was a good bat cave)

What I wouldn’t mind doing though is buying some agricultural land, building a concrete pig sty with a deep base and burying something there. Then rent it out to a farmer. Might take a while to recover my preps when I need them but chances are it won’t get discovered and if the land was mine then they couldn’t build on it or it be bought out from under me by the thieving council for a new retail park or something without me knowing. Nothing is perfect. Choose well.

As you can see though we are back to needing money or we could lose everything. Isn’t that life.

Conclusion

It is impossible for us to avoid having to move. We can be forced to by events beyond our control and most of the time we will have the capability to ensure our preps are looked after and not put at risk. However, in the eventuality your home is repossessed or that you are evicted then there is the real risk that you will be unable to look after your preps. Hoping it doesn’t happen isn’t in the preppers mindset so consider what you would do if it happened. I hope it doesn’t but everything we do is based on situations we don’t want and this one happens to a lot of people every day. Every single day and it is getting worse in the current climate. No one can help you and you will be on your own unless you have some close friend who can help with temporary storage or something.

When you do move though don’t forget you need to explore your new home, search out your new local area for interesting items, check Googlemaps again and plan your situation and not forgetting you might find like minded individuals there. In one way it will be an adventure with new things to find.